Good-bye and Amen by Beth Gutcheon Page B

wolf. And I thought the royal trappings would be spiritually dangerous for him. The first step toward becoming a bishop should be a great deal of very humble prayer, a great deal of “Thy will, Lord, not mine.” To be sure that it is God calling you to the bishopric, and not your own ego. The higher you go in the church, the harder it is to tell which line your calls are coming in on.
    But something in the heart of man loves a hierarchy. A pyramid, having it there, and climbing it. This is a church we’ve built in the name of one who said, “When two or three are gathered in my name…” Two or three. In private, with no display and no audience, just two or three, in faith. This is a church of very poor listeners.
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    Monica Faithful There was a time when I knew Jesus as a person, a man like my father or my brother, who had me by the hand—who knew and cared about me as a person, who listened for my voice in the night and found ways to answer me, showed me his love in the eyes of a friend, spoke to me, from pulpits, from books, from the mouths of children. He was alive and He was with me. To have had that and lost it is…I can’t finish this sentence.
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    Ted Wineapple Norman told me once about the moment he decided to be a priest. He and Monica were on some island in Maine, poking around an old settlement that had vanished, when he heard somebody weeping. No one was there. He said it was a woman. He said it seemed to be pleading with him for something, comfort, attention, something. And he knew in that instant that he could help, that God wanted him to help.
    Have you made any sort of study of ghost stories? I have. Not The Turn of the Screw, not the kind made up by authors. I mean the kinds of contacts that happen to real people. I do happen to believe the spirit world is thick around us. How could I not? But I’ll tell you something about those stories. For one thing, there are more of them in places close to water. Islands. I have no idea why, I’m just observing. For another, by far the most common are of furious servants or slaves or victims. People who could not express their rage in life at what life had given to others but not to them. Would you seek such souls if they had bodies?
    I asked Norman that, and in about ten seconds flat he was off on a tear about starting a writing program for angry people in prisons. I mean—he wasn’t wrong, but that wasn’t the point.
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    Islands. Interesting.
    Of course we are involved with those in the body. The air around you is crowded with us.
    How we concern ourselves with you is stage eight or nine at least. There have been those in the body who have grasped it, but usually even here it takes individual tutorial. One can’t even ensnare it in body language without using a body word like that “individual.” Since that particular personal individual thing one spends so much time protecting becomes useless here as the egg shell to the hatchling. The great relief, the great good thing about here, is that you don’t have to now protect and honor both at once, the shell and the spirit maturing inside. All those uncomfortable dualities. Art versus science. Mind versus body. Good versus evil. Becoming versus being. One yearned for the simplicity of being all one thing. Here it is.
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    Norman Faithful The diocese of Hawaii was seeking a bishop coadjutor. It was perfect. It was as if the Lord said to me, through my child’s desperate struggle for breath, Take your family to a new place, where it’s pure and warm and you can all heal. There you will find a mentor to help you grow into the miter and the crozier. This is what I have trained you for. Here you will be my good shepherd, and use your highest gifts.
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    Bella McChesney I made an appointment with Norman. I told Paul I was going to do it. I thought it might help him to hear what people were saying if it came from a woman, since he seemed